Wrong lesson

If you missed the 2011 diploma results, published alongside this summer’s GCSEs and A-levels, you’re not alone. There was almost no coverage of them. When Labour’s flagship education programme was first announced in 2005, the government predicted up to 40 per cent of 14 to 16-year-olds, some 250,000 students per year group, would take diploma qualifications by 2013. This year, a little over 10,500 students completed the full programme, not all successfully. At a cost so far of up to £373m, diplomas have been a spectacular failure.

What happened? In short, the architects of the diploma failed to learn the lessons of the past. As with previous national, vocationally-related qualifications, like the GNVQ, the diploma is neither fish nor fowl. Offered in 14 vocational areas, aimed at the “forgotten half” of students for whom academic learning is supposedly out of reach, it is an umbrella qualification worth (at least in league table points) five GCSEs grades D-G for level 1, and seven GCSEs grades A* to C for level 2. It was introduced as an alternative to the baccalaureate-type qualifications recommended by the 2004 Tomlinson report, but it is not practical enough to be truly vocational, unlike many of its European counterparts, nor is it the equivalent of GCSEs or A-levels (with the possible exception of engineering).

It is also needlessly complex. In order to pass, a student must complete ten separate elements that include his or her vocational area, additional qualifications, functional mathematics, English, ICT, “personal learning and thinking skills,” and work experience. Failure on any element means failing the diploma—hence the numbers shrink dramatically between those starting the programme and completing it. The area where students struggle the most is arguably the most important: “functional skills”—literacy and numeracy tests to assess whether students can cope with the adult world.

There are many lessons to learn from this—not least that overly complicated assessment regimes do not work. But one deserves particular attention: the underlying assumption, shared across the political spectrum, that up to 50 per cent of children have a “style of learning” incompatible with the academic grind of GCSEs and A-levels. Consequently—in the conventional wisdom—such students need more applied or vocational qualifications, and these must be the “moral equivalents” of GCSEs or A-levels. Our European counterparts do not share these peculiar notions; they insist that students in vocational programmes continue studying their native languages, mathematics, social sciences and modern foreign languages. Yet in this country, we simply deny access to most academic subjects to those who have not gained five A* to C grades at age 16. The coalition’s EBacc—a new certificate awarded to any student who secures grade C or above in five core subjects: English, maths, the sciences, a foreign language and a humanity—is no remedy, since it concentrates once again on higher achievers. Schools will likely provide these subjects only to those they believe are capable of getting the grades, rather than to all.

Officials and educational experts have assumed that academic subjects are simply too boring for many students. But this is nonsense. Why should history be less exciting than leisure and tourism? Perhaps the answer is less in what we teach, but in who teaches it, and to whom.

All students should have access to the history of their country and another language besides English, as well as maths and science. To address the “it’s just too boring” charge, we simply need better teachers, recruited from higher levels in the talent pool, and paid more. As the House of Commons education select committee has noted, very few of the best graduates become teachers; in 2007 those embarking on teacher-training averaged the equivalent of just three Cs at A level. In Finland, where students lead the world on international tests, teachers have a minimum of an MA in the subject they teach. But high academic achievement is not enough; teachers must also be passionate about what they teach, and enthusiastic about sharing that passion with their students. To this end, Finland’s educational system trusts teachers; schools have far more autonomy; there are no national tests before age 18; and within the limits of a basic national curriculum teachers are free to teach as they see fit.

Reforms along these lines would make a big difference here. But we will need a much deeper change too. We must nurture a culture that better respects the teaching profession, and that values the education of all our children. In effect, we must rethink ruthlessly what, and how, our children learn.